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Saturday, September 18, 2010

BioShock: Infinite | Anarchism | Quotations

I'm far too lazy at the moment to actually comment directly on the article, but RPS slid out a little post yesterday concerning BioShock: Infinite. I found the commentary interesting (and of course, humorous), so in the interest of pumping out more content on this blog again, I figured I could stick them up here rather than my Tumblr like I normally would. I need to start exercising the will to write here again. I'm very much out of practice and this helps that.

"Anarchy has never meant an absence of organisation and a life of complete chaos except in the slanders of royalists and conservatives (which have become the standard, which I think means they won)"

"I surely hope Infinite isn’t just doing Anarchy the same way Bioshock did Objectivism. Boy would that be dull. Just painting a picture of the US back when it had a far more interesting political landscape than it’s had for most of the 20th century would be far more interesting."

"it’d be great if a game (and most other forms of fiction, for that matter, with a small number of exceptions) could actually manage to depict Anarchists realistically (and with an actual knowledge of some Anarchist history), but i’m pretty pessimistic – it always gets cocked up, and you get caricatures made by people who’s conception of Anarchism goes barely any farther than terrorism, punks, and Crimethinc (not that i’m suggesting that, at least, the terrorist aspect should be ignored, as at least THAT is historically important)."

"First of all there are many radically different flavors of anarchism. Most prominent are anarcho-syndicalism and anarcho-capitalism. Anarcho-capitalism is about abolishing monopoly of government on things it has monopoly over. It does not mean no law or no police. It means free market in those things."

"I really wouldn’t say anarcho-capitalism is prominent outside of the Unites States. Or outside of the internet, really. If you talk to a European anarchist and tell them about anarcho-capitalism they’ll look at you like you’re mad."

"Anarchist splits, in Barcelona? Unless you hark back to the days of pisteleros and the CNT/FAI division there’s not much happening but your usual fighting of Fascism and Stalinism. If it’s anarchist infighting you want that’s mostly been done through the medium of name calling and pamphlets since the time of this games setting, bullets should be saved for reactionaries after all."